Belyanin Honored for Research Excellence

Dr. Alexey Belyanin, associate professor of physics at Texas A&M University, has been selected to receive the 2007 JoAnn Treat Research Excellence Award by the Texas A&M Research Foundation Board of Trustees.

Named in honor of JoAnn Treat, who served 19 years as president of the Research Foundation before retiring in August 2003, the award is presented annually to a faculty member whose research is administered through the Foundation in recognition of research excellence and accomplishments during the past five years.

Each year the award alternates between two categories of eligible faculty — tenured or tenure-track and those who have not yet achieved the rank of professor — at all Texas A&M University System-affiliated institutions. The 2007 award recognizes the latter category.

Belyanin, an internationally respected leader in the rapidly developing interdisciplinary research field of optics of nanostructured materials, was presented with the award by its namesake, JoAnn Treat, and Board Chairman H. Jarrell Gibbs at a November 30 ceremony held in conjunction with the Foundation’s annual councilor/trustee fall meeting. Along with the award, he received $10,000 and a commemorative plaque and will have his name inscribed on the JoAnn Treat commemorative glass vase on display in the Foundation office lobby.

“I am extremely pleased with such a great honor and thankful to the Department of Physics and College of Science for nominating me,” Belyanin said. “In the process of receiving my award, I got an opportunity to learn more about the Research Foundation, its history (in which JoAnn Treat played such a prominent role) and how they function. I was really impressed. They do a great job of minimizing red tape and bureaucracy while maintaining an extremely user-friendly service for us as principal investigators. They are very interesting and outstanding people, and I just hope they will continue doing what they are doing.”

After receiving his Ph.D. from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1995, Belyanin held research positions at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and at Texas A&M before joining the Texas A&M Physics faculty in 2003 as an assistant professor. He was granted early tenure in spring 2007.

Well known for his breakthrough ideas and developments in research fields that span semiconductor physics, quantum optics, photonic devices and high-energy astrophysics, Belyanin currently leads Texas A&M efforts in two National Science Foundation-funded, multi-university consortiums. He is credited as one of the two intellectual fathers of the Raman quantum cascade laser and is widely respected by his peers for his breadth of knowledge, his uncanny ability to bridge the gap between theory and experimentalists, and his ability to attract research funding.

In addition to being published in Nature and major physics journals, Belyanin has served on several NSF review panels. An in-demand presenter at invited conferences and symposia across the world, he has also chaired a number of major international conferences.

While at Texas A&M, Belyanin has developed a new graduate course and taught several service courses. In addition, he serves as a faculty advisor for the Texas A&M chapter of the Society of Physics Students.

Belyanin is the second faculty member in the College of Science to receive the prestigious award since its inception in 2004. Dr. Deborah Bell-Pedersen, associate professor of biology, merited selection in 2005.

For more information on Belyanin and his research, visit http://faculty.physics.tamu.edu/belyanin/.

-aTm-

Contact: Shana K. Hutchins, (979) 862-1237 or shutchins@tamu.edu or Dr. Alexey Belyanin, (979) 845-7785 or belyanin@physics.tamu.edu